Box Office Wrap Up: X-Men soar, Alice falls on Memorial Day Weekend

The long weekend led to a strong outing for Fox’s astonishing mutants, despite a harsh critical reception, while Disney’s latest live-action feature, Alice Through the Looking Glass, shattered upon arrival. X-Men: Apocalypse managed to take in 80 million dollars over the 4-day period. This total is a touch lower than the franchises high-water mark (coincidentally achieved by another film hated by critics, X-Men 3: the Last Stand) but the true silver lining for Fox was that this film notched a strong “A-” Cinemascore from audience exit polling. Those results, plus a few positive reviews, should help this iteration to avoid a steep fall-off. Among other X-films, this one most resembled First Class, and should end up with a domestic take north of the 150 million dollar range.

Cue the “sad horn” sound effect.

The flip side to Fox’s good news went to Disney, whose latest live-action adaptation fell flat. Alice Through the Looking Glass earned a meager 34 million over four days, well short of the eye-popping 115 million the original made way back in 2010. While this total is comfortably higher than this year’s other live-action flop, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, it is also perilously close to other Johnny Depp led flops such as The Lone Ranger and Dark Shadows. Once again, this film was savaged by critics but generally well received by viewers (gaining another “A-” score from audiences.) The only downside to that news is that with such a low first week, the film would need to age extremely gracefully to hope to make even a fraction of its 170 million dollar budget back domestically. It has fared only nominally better overseas.

This speed bump meant little to Disney, though, as this long weekend propelled the film studio to over 4 billion dollars in total box office earnings this year. Billion. Four of them. Despite Alice tanking, it still managed to get second place, and that means that Disney has four films in the top ten of current movies, money-wise. Zootopia managed to hang on to the ten spot, and is just shy of having made a billion dollars on its own when you factor in all markets. And we still have a Star Wars movie coming from Disney this year!

From throat ripper to bodice ripper. Who knew?

The only other notable change in position this week was Love & Friendship, a period drama based upon a Jane Austen novel. It is notably for two reasons: it was only ranked at the #14 spot last week before expanding and making the top ten, and it stars Kate Beckinsale, of Underworld infamy. I didn’t know she even made any other movies beside those trashy vampire flicks! With Underworld 5 due out this year, she could be positioning herself for a bit of a come-back.

About The Author

Neil Worcester is currently a freelance writer and editor based in the Portland, Maine area. He has developed a variety of content for blogs and businesses, and his current focus is on media and food blogging. Follow him on Facebook and Google+!